ASUS VivoBook U38DT Ultrabook Pops Up with Radeon HD 8550M Graphics

Not yet announced by AMD, the Radeon HD 8000 family of graphics cards has already started to creep up courtesy of several e-tail stores who jumped the gun and put up for pre-order an ultrabook (the ASUS VivoBook U38DT-R3001H) equipped with a Radeon HD 8550M. Unfortunately the listings are short on details and only mention that the Radeon HD 8550M (which hopefully isn't a rebranded 7 series card) has 1 GB of memory.

Today, I use my wife's laptop, also with reduced sized cursor keys. Working in Excel was a complete PITA. Why are some manufacturers shrinking the cursors like that? It's a very Apple thing to do :shadedshu

No need for such a big shift or caps lock or tab key. These are RARELY used. Much less than the cursors. Why oh why doesnt a little ergonomics and usage analysis go into a kb design.

You can optimise either to framerate or resolution, I think most of us will gladly sacrifice the latter for the former especially in games to be released a few years down the road. Also, a nice shiny screen will increase the cost, you will not be seeing €800 with a 1080p screen, closer to €1000

8550M is definitely old architecture, seeing how the A8-4555M uses the old VLIW4 (Northern Islands) GPU with 384 cores, 7600G. I'm just not sure if AMD renamed the 7600G already present in A8-4555M, or if it is an additional discrete chip. Since this is an ultrabook, with low-ish heat capacity and limited PCB space, I'd say it's more likely they're referring to the integrated GPU portion of the APU.

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You can optimise either to framerate or resolution, I think most of us will gladly sacrifice the latter for the former especially in games to be released a few years down the road. Also, a nice shiny screen will increase the cost, you will not be seeing €800 with a 1080p screen, closer to €1000

No shit Sherlock, but that's why other options exist for people who want to enjoy glorious hi-res screens. This option is for people like me. I am sure your needs is covered in some other products, but doesn't mean every product out there needs to satisfy your demand.

If 1920x1080 video playback is all you care about then go buy one of the other options with Intel HD Graphics and 1080p screen.

The point of THIS thread is for people that actually want to do some gaming, hence the dedicated card.

Also, HD content doesn't necessarily look better on a 1080p screen. If it is 720p content, which most streamed stuff is, then it actually looks better on a 1366x768 screen because that results in the least amount of scaling artifacts.

I would just like to note that 1080p IPS will be in full swing next year on smaller laptops. Tablets finally embarrassed laptops enough to push it to be a lot more common and once competition sets in, its likely to be in most mid range laptops. Even the lower mid range.

All of the new GPUs are based on 28-nm HP with straining where the previous generation was 28-nm HPL. There is no 8400/8300/8200/8100 as those are taken by Kaveri A4/Kaveri E2/Jaguar E2/Jaguar E/Jaguar C/Jaguar Z.